


Wake Me Up When September Ends

by nixster627



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, I refuse to kill Rosa, Jesse Manes is His Own Warning, Kyle will eventually be a good guy, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, but in the beginning he is not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23641468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nixster627/pseuds/nixster627
Summary: Senior year of high school brings a lot of changes for everyone. Especially for Alex and Liz when they accidentally discover that Michael, Max, and Isabel have superpowers and don't know how to confront them about it.
Relationships: Liz Ortecho/Kyle Valenti, Max Evans/Liz Ortecho, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 13
Kudos: 83





	1. First Day of School

Michael groaned as the sun started to shine in his eyes. That’s what he gets for sleeping in the bed of his truck again instead of in the cab, but the cab is just so cramped that he is sore the next day when he sleeps in it.

Now that summer is ending it is going to start getting colder at nights, so he is going to have to get more blankets or waste gas to run the car for a little while so it can heat up before he goes to sleep.

He grabs his phone to check the time, only to then realize that it is the first day of senior year and he is going to be late if he doesn’t get moving quickly over to the Evans’ house.

The drive is longer than he’d like because he was further out into the desert so that no one would be able to see him. He hopes that he gets there early enough that he can eat some food before they have to leave.

He knocks at the door and when no one answers after a few seconds, he knocks again...and then again, and he keeps knocking until someone answers the door, only it’s not who he is expecting it to be.

“Oh, hi Mrs. Evans,” Michael starts off very awkwardly fidgeting as he tries to think of a way to get around her while also looking anywhere but her. “I promised Max and Isabel that I would drive them to school today.”

“Come on in, Michael,” Mrs. Evans says politely as she opens the door wider for him. “Isabel is still getting ready and I don’t think Max is even fully awake yet.”

Michael grabs at the first excuse he can to get away from this conversation. “Then I am going to go wake him up. Don’t want him to be late on the first day of school and all,” and Michael rushes out of the kitchen and up the stairs to Max’s room, trying to semi-discreetly take an apple on his way.

Michael barges into Max’s room being as loud as he can so that he will wake up Max.

“Dude, what the hell?” He hears from under the covers of Max’s bed when Max’s head starts to peek out. He has bed head to the extreme and looks like he spent his entire night reading instead of sleeping.

“You knew I was supposed to be coming to pick you up this morning and yet you still sleep in so that I am forced into conversing with your mother!” Max just ignores him because this is a rant that Michael does every time he has to talk to his mom.

“You know, it wouldn’t be so awkward if you didn’t make it awkward. My mother does actually like you despite what you think. I think that she hopes that all your science and math will rub off on us.” Max says, even though he and Isabel aren't exactly helpless in those subjects, they are just not on the same level as Michael or Liz Ortecho.

“Please, no mom actually wants their kid hanging out with someone like me. According to most adults, I have ‘discipline issues’.” Michael says with air quotes while Max just rolls his eyes at, what he believes is, Michael’s lack of logic.

“Whatever you say, just remember that she never turns you away.”

Michael doesn’t think Max or Isabel will ever understand it is so difficult for him to be around their parents. He is the unwanted one, they chose Max and Isabel and they chose to leave him behind. And he knows that they probably didn’t know that Michael was related to them, but it still stung knowing the rejection was there.

“Ugh, why is it so loud in here this early in the morning?” A new voice enters into the conversation.

Michael smiles as he goes to hug Isabel. “Because Max won’t get out of bed,” Michael says as he points over to Max who is very obviously still in his pajamas in bed.

Isabel walks over to Max’s bed and pulls his covers off of him and onto the floor. “Get out of bed, I don’t want to be late on the first day of school. I want to have time to see how everyone has changed over the summer so I know that I am up to date on all of the trends.”

Max rolls his eyes again, if he keeps doing that his eyes are going to get stuck in the back of his head. “Of course that’s the only reason you want to go to school, not to see your friends or learn or anything like that.”

“Whatever,” Isabel says as she turns around to leave. “Just get ready quickly so that we can leave soon.”

Alex has a love/hate relationship with the school year starting back up again. It gives him a reason to be out of the house for at least 9 hours a day for 5 days of the week. The more time that he gets to spend out of his house, the better. But, at school he has to deal with people like Kyle who just want to pick on him because he is gay. Still, the teasing is better than getting beaten bloody by his own father.

He can already hear his dad moving around downstairs which fills Alex with a sense of dread, he was hoping his father would already have left for work before he woke up. He doesn’t want to have to see his father today, he doesn’t want to deal with both him and Kyle. It’s bad enough that he knows Kyle is going to come after him for the septum piercing he got over the summer, dealing with his father on top of that is too much for a single day.

Just as he is contemplating sneaking out the window and going to the Crashdown for breakfast on the way to school, there is a firm knock on his bedroom door. Without waiting for an answer, his dad walks into his room.

“Hurry up and get dressed, you don’t want to be late on your first day of school.”

“School doesn’t start for another 2 hours dad, I have got plenty of time to get ready.”

“Do as I say,” his dad’s tone has a threatening edge to it, “and don’t put in all those piercings or put on makeup. Real Manes men don’t wear makeup.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be a real Manes man,” Alex mumbles as he gets out of bed to get dressed. His dad leaves his room, presumably to go back to getting ready for work, not that Alex really cares all that much.

Alex gets dressed as quickly as possible and runs down the stairs. “I am going to stop for breakfast on my way to school,” he shouts as he runs out the door.

As he walks down the street he pulls out his septum piercing. He’ll either have to put on the eyeliner at the Crashdown or at the bathroom at school.

Liz woke up in the morning wishing that it was still summer, now she has to wake up early and spend all day getting shown up by Michael Guerin in science class, which is AP Chemistry this year. She is still mad that he was at the top of the class in AP Bio last year even though she is the one who wants to be a biologist. She knows he wants to be an engineer so why was he even taking AP Bio?! But it's not like she is bitter about that or anything.

She gets out of bed to start getting ready for the day when she hears cursing coming from the bathroom.

When she goes to investigate, she finds Rosa with her bleeding leg up on the counter.

“What are you doing and why are you doing it?” Liz asks while looking at her sister suspiciously.

“I am shaving my legs and because I want to.” Rosa responds like it should be obvious.

“Well, yeah, but why do you want to?” Liz is still suspicious of her sister’s intentions.

“Maybe I just want to look good.”

“But you are always wearing jeans.”

“Maybe I want to feel good on the inside.” Rosa shoots back with a smug look on her face.

“Whatever, just hurry up. I want to get ready for school.” Liz gives up on trying to find out why today of all days her sister starts to act weird.

She gets dressed and heads downstairs to get some food from the Crashdown before the breakfast crowd comes in. She sees Alex sitting in one of the booths scarfing down her papi’s famous churro pancakes.

“Wow! You are eating those really fast,” Liz says instead of a greeting.

Alex looks up, surprised to see her standing right there, but quickly puts a teasing smile on his face. “‘Hey Alex. How are you doing Alex? What’s on your mind Alex?’” Alex responds to her lack of greeting.

“Sorry Alex. How are you doing?”

“I have been better, but at least I don’t have to see my father for the next three days because he has to check on a base out of town.” Alex responds, feeling grateful for the many work trips he has to take to bases around New Mexico and the surrounding states.

“That’s good,” she says as her papi sets down another plate of churro pancakes in front of her.

“How’s your morning going so far?”

Liz thinks about it for a moment. “My morning is going fine, but Rosa is acting really weird and she cut herself while shaving this morning, so my guess is that her morning is _not_ going great.”

They eat for the rest of the time together in comfortable silence.

“I still have to put my makeup on, but after that do you want to head to school together?” Liz asks as she grabs their plates to bring them back to the kitchen.

“Sure. Would you mind if I put on my eyeliner here too?” Alex asks unsurely. He knows that she doesn’t mind when he wears makeup, but he feels weird asking her if he can put it on in her home.

“Of course you can! Come on, let’s go to the bathroom upstairs.”

Once they get to the bathroom they walk in on Rosa who is still in there doing her makeup.

“Why are you still in here? You usually never put this much effort into your appearance,” Liz eyes her with a calculating gaze, trying to find out why Rosa is acting so different.

“I want to look good for the first day of school.” Rosa says shortly

“You never care what other people think.”

“Yeah, well, ‘new year, new personality’ or whatever that saying is,” Rosa states as she leaves the bathroom.

“I am leaving for school in ten minutes so if you want a ride be ready,” Rosa calls back as she heads downstairs.

Liz still looks after her suspiciously, Rosa never wants to get to school early, she rarely wants to get to school, but she decides to let it go for the moment. “Come on Alex, let’s be quick so we don’t miss our ride to school.”


	2. Alex and Liz's Adventure to Find the Missing Guitar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't think I would finish this chapter til the end of the week, but then my classes today were really boring so I continued to write this instead of my research paper for history.

When they arrived at school, Isabel disappeared on them before they even made it to the front steps which made Michael a little angry since she was the one who was rushing them to get to school so that she could “people watch”. He and Max decided to just sit near the front steps of the school until they needed to go to their lockers before their first class. He and Max were catching up over the rest of their summer since Max and Isabel were on a family trip for the last two weeks of it, but Michael quickly became bored after Liz showed up and all Max would do was stare at her instead of getting up and talking to her or even just talking to him.

Michael got up and decided to explore the school before classes started. As he is wandering around he sees the music room and figures he could spend the rest of his time before school starts in there.

He goes to the nearest outlet to plug in his phone because he hasn’t charged it since he was working at Sanders two days ago. It’s a good thing he doesn’t use it all that often except to text Isabel or Max or check the time. It probably would have been dead by now if he used it more.

As he looks around, only one thing catches his eye. It is a guitar that looks like it has been used a lot so he assumes that it is one of the school’s guitars and picks it up.

He has always been fascinated by music and its ability to make all the chaos in his head quiet down, but he has never actually had the chance to sit down and learn it by himself. _Now is as good a time as any_.

He messes around with a few of the strings and places his fingers in different positions just to see what it sounds like. He is so focused on the guitar that he doesn’t notice when someone else walks into the room.

“Mr. Guerin! What are you doing in here?” The music teacher yells at him as she walks into the room.

Startled, he quickly stands up and shows her the guitar, “I was just playing around with it before school started.”

“If you brought your own guitar to school then why did you have to come to the music room to play it?” 

And now Michael was confused because he thought that the guitar belonged to the school, so if it didn’t belong to the school then _who did it belong to?_

“That is your guitar, right?” The teacher asked when Michael just stared at the guitar instead of answering her question.

“...um...yes?” Michael started off unconfidently, “I just came in here to...play where I knew no one would hear me. I’m still learning and I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of others.”

The teacher looked at him for a minute trying to assess if he was telling her the truth, but he must have said something right because she responded with “Well then you will have to find somewhere else to play because I have to get the room ready for my first class.”

“Sure, no problem,” he said quickly as he was trying to get out of there as fast as possible.

He took the guitar back to his truck and put it in the cab, he figured he could return it to the music room tomorrow morning and he hoped that whoever the guitar actually belonged to would not go looking for it until then. He ran back into school as the bell rang for first period.

When they get to school, Rosa immediately abandons Alex and Liz with the vague excuse of going to meet up with someone. So Alex and Liz wander around in comfortable silence until they find Maria sitting at one of the tables.

“Hey Maria! How was the rest of your summer?” Liz says excitedly as she runs to hug Maria.

“You mean since we saw each other yesterday? Nothing much has changed in my life since then.” Maria sasses as she hugs Liz and then Alex.

They go to sit down at the table to hang out before school starts when suddenly Liz is being hugged from behind by Kyle.

“Hey babe, I missed you.” Kyle kissed Liz’s cheek after he said this.

“You came to see me at the Crashdown two days ago.”

“I can still miss you,” he said with a small pout on his face.

Alex looks away so that he doesn’t have to see Kyle and stands up. “I’m going to get a drink from the vending machine,” he says as he walks away, not waiting for a response from anyone.

He takes his time going to the vending machine and spends a minute or two picking out a drink before slowly walking back to the table where he notices that Liz and Kyle are missing. He lets out a breath that he didn’t even realize he was holding.

“What happened to Liz and Kyle?” He promised himself that he would remain civil with Kyle around Liz as long as Kyle decides to remain civil too.

“They said something about wanting to get to class early, but I have a feeling they just went somewhere else so that they could make out.” Maria rolls her eyes at this and then gets excited when she says “I could read your palm if you want me to. We haven’t done that in a while.”

“Sure, but I doubt anything in my life has really changed since the last time you read it.” Alex is used to Maria and her mom’s belief that they have psychic abilities, he even thinks he might believe in it considering how much they get things right.

Maria takes his right hand and stares at it intently, occasionally running her fingertips over some of the lines on his hand. “From what I am seeing, your life is going to be changing very soon and because of that you will make some deep connections.”

“Well that’s something positive at least.” Alex says and soon after the bell rings for them to go to their first class.

“I’ll see you at lunch.” He says because they don’t have any morning classes together.

The school day went by pretty fast, especially since the first day was mostly just teachers handing out the syllabus for the class and talking about all their expectations for the year.

Alex leaves his last class and heads towards Liz’s locker where he is supposed to meet up with Maria, Liz, and Rosa. He is the last one to get there and they are all talking about their plans for after school.

“Do you guys want to head to the Crashdown together to hang out before homework starts to get crazy?” Liz asked.

“I wish I could, but I promised my mom that I would help her with inventory before the bar gets crowded today.” Maria said a little sadly, “I should probably leave now because we have a lot to do. I’ll see you guys later.”

“My shift starts soon so I will be at the Crashdown, I just don’t know how much hanging out I will be able to do. After school is when all the teenagers come in and I have to make a million milkshakes.” Rosa was already resigned to an afternoon with the milkshake blender.

“I was going to go to the music room to play the guitar for a little bit.” Alex had left Flint’s guitar at the school at the end of last year when Flint graduated and enlisted. _It’s not like Flint is going to miss his guitar anyway_ , Alex thought. Flint never really played the guitar after their mom left when Alex was 10.

“I want to go with you, I haven’t heard you play guitar all summer.” Liz said excitedly as she went to follow him to the music room.

“Yeah, my dad grounded me and took away my guitar.” In reality, his dad destroyed his guitar when he got angry at Alex at one point at the beginning of summer. He had to get a job at the UFO Emporium in order to save up money to get a new one. He still needed a little bit more money before he could buy a new one and then he would have to hope that if he put it in the shed, his father wouldn’t find it.

When they got to the music room, Alex looked around and couldn’t find his guitar so he went over to Mrs. Diaz, the music teacher, to ask her. “What happened to my guitar? I put it in the corner over there so that I could come play it after school.”

“That was your guitar, Alex?” At his nod, she continued, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. A student came in here this morning claiming it was his guitar so I let him take it. His name is Michael Guerin if you want to go talk to him. I believe he is in your grade.”

She sounded genuinely sorry about it and Alex felt the need to reassure her. “It’s not your fault, it was actually my brother’s guitar so you had never seen me play it before. I’ll go talk to Michael about it.”

They left the music room together hoping to find Michael before he left school.

“What could Michael possibly want with your guitar? All I have ever seen him do is write down equations in that notebook he carries around and work on cars at Sanders.” Liz doesn’t think she has ever heard Michael play the guitar before or even mention that he is into music. Though she only really knows him because he is friends with Max and is constantly getting better grades than her.

“I don’t know. I just hope he gives it back to me or else I won’t have a guitar to play for a while.”

As they are leaving the school Liz says that she can’t see Michael’s truck which probably means that he is at Sanders already.

They rode to school with Rosa that morning which means that they need to walk back to the Crashdown in order to get a car to head to Sanders because it is definitely too far of a walk from the school to Sanders.

Michael was excited when his last class ended because that meant he could go find Max and Isabel to show them what he found at Sanders a week ago while they were on vacation. He hasn’t had a chance to bring it up to them yet but he thinks the bunker he found is really cool. He covered it up with an Airstream that Sanders told him he could have when he graduated if he keeps working for him until then.

“Can you guys come to Sanders with me to hang out for a little while? There is something cool that I want to show you,” he blurts out the second he sees both of them standing at Max’s locker.

“Sure, but can we stop at our house first. I want to drop off my bag and grab something to eat before we go out there,” Isabel says while thinking of whether or not she should change her shoes because the junkyard might mess them up.

After it took Isabel 30 minutes to change her entire outfit and eat a snack, they were back in Michael’s truck headed to Sanders.

“So what is it you want to show us?” Max asked as they got close to Sanders.

“I’ll show you when we get there. I don’t want to ruin the surprise,” was Michael’s response, but he seemed to be in a pretty big hurry to get there.

When they got to Sanders, Michael hoped out of the car and closed the gate so that anyone who was trying to come by right now would know they are closed and went back to join Max and Isabel.

First thing Michael does when he reaches them is show them the Airstream. “Sanders says that if I keep working for him all the way to the time that I graduate that I can keep the Airstream as a graduation present.”

“This is what you were so excited to show us,” Isabel asks unimpressed. “With the way you were acting I thought you got something cooler.” She was eyeing the Airstream suspiciously, like it would fall apart at any moment.

“First of all,” Michael started gesturing towards the Airstream with his hand, “this is already really cool. Second of all,” he continues with a pointed look in her direction, “you should have let me finish before judging me.”

“Well ok then, on with it,” Isabel says impatiently.

“When I was messing around with it, I lifted it up to see if there was a way to connect the water in there to water pipes when I found this,” he says as he uses his telekinesis to push the Airstream back and reveal the hatch that leads to the bunker.

“Michael, you can’t just use your powers like that,” Max scolds him while looking around to see if anyone saw him.

“Who is going to see me? I closed the shop already and old man Sanders almost never comes over this way.”

“Still, you should be careful using your powers,” Max says, giving Michael his signature disappointed look.

“How else am I supposed to move almost three tons of metal.” Michael huffs out under his breath so that Max won’t hear. “Whatever, you guys should come see what I was able to do down there.”

He leads them down the ladder and shows them his mini-lab which has some of the equations he has worked out for space ships and the few pieces of the console he found while working at Fosters’ Ranch over the summer.

“What is all this stuff?” Max asks as he looks around at all the different papers and Isabel picks up a piece of the console.

“It’s everything I have found out about where we came from,” Michael smiles as he thinks that one day he might even be able to find the planet they came from.

“You did all this by yourself?” Isabel asks, and when Michael nods, adds on “why?”

“Because I want to know more about -”

Isabel cuts him off. “No I mean, why did you do it alone? We could have helped you.”

“The both of you have always seemed so content with your lives here on Earth. I guess I just didn’t want to mess with that.” Not looking at either of them while he speaks, feeling embarrassed to admit this to them.

“No matter how much we like our lives on Earth, we still want to know about where we came from,” Max says, staring intently at Michael til he looks at him, “I don’t know how much help I would be with all the spaceship science stuff, but I can help you look for more pieces if you want.”

“Really?” Michael says hopefully as he looks up at Max.

“You know what I think we need? A sibling bonding night. Come on Michael, you can sleepover at our house tonight and we will watch a bunch of movies,” Isabel demands more than asks, but Michael is grateful for it anyway.

“Are you sure your parents will be okay with it?”

“Yeah, you sleepover on school nights all the time,” Isabel says with certainty, “let’s go.”

It takes Liz and Alex a little over 15 minutes to walk back to the Crashdown and they decide to drink a quick milkshake before heading over to Sanders to confront Michael about the guitar.

When they get to Sanders, the gate is closed and locked.

“Are you sure that Michael is here?” Alex asked Liz because she was the one who told him this is where Michael hangs out after school.

“Yeah, Max said that Michael works here everyday until 7 p.m.,” and Liz sounds sure about that so Alex decides to squeeze through the fence without making too much noise. He doesn’t want to disturb whoever else may be here. Liz follows after him with a little more maneuvering after her hair gets caught in the fence.

They walk along the dirt road until they hear voices and Alex ducks behind one of the nearby cars and pulls Liz with him.

“What are you doing?” Liz whispers after he makes a shushing motion.

“He’s talking to people, I don’t want to go over there and yell at him while he is talking to people,” Alex replies like the answer should be obvious.

Liz still doesn’t know why that means they have to hide behind a car, but she decides to peak her head up, she turns back to Alex and says “It’s just Max and Isabel. He is always around them, they probably even know that he has your guitar,” as she pulls Alex up to show them.

“All you have to do is go over there and-” she stops talking when she sees one of the vehicles in the yard move without anyone touching it. Alex quickly pulls her back down so that Max, Isabel, and Michael don’t see them.

“What just happened?” Liz semi-whisper yells at Alex and he tries to put his hand over her mouth to keep her from talking.

“I don’t know, but I think I will wait until tomorrow to ask Guerin for my guitar back,” Alex says as he peaks his head back over the car and sees that the three of them are gone.

“Where did they go?” Liz asks.

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to be here when they get back,” Alex answered as he started to jog back towards where the car was, Liz close behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm going to try to finish up the next chapter and get it posted this weekend.


	3. A Study of Telekinesis

Alex and Liz drove back to the Crashdown in a very uncomfortable silence as they were processing what they had just witnessed.

“How do you think that Airstream...moved on its own?” Alex worded his question very carefully.

“I don’t know, but it’s Michael right? So maybe he built some device that is really small but can move heavy machinery. He’s smart like that,” Liz rambled on, trying to convince herself that it was the only possible explanation.

“I didn’t see him using anything but his mind. I think he moved it with his mind,” Alex says, trying to convince himself that he is not crazy for thinking that Guerin is telekinetic.

“How is that possible?” Liz shouted at him.

“I don’t know,” Alex shouted back equally as loud.

“I think we both need to just go home and sleep on it and come back with fresh eyes and a level head tomorrow,” Liz announced, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt.

“Yeah, okay,” Alex did not exactly sound convinced that sleeping would change anything, but he went along with it.

When Alex woke up the next morning, he was glad that his dad was away on business because he started to freak out when he remembered what happened the day before and having his dad there would have made it much worse.

He had so many questions on his mind. _Who was the one who moved the Airstream with their mind?_ He had already accepted the fact that that was what happened, at least one of them had telekinesis. _But did they all have telekinesis? If it was one of the twins, then both of them had to have it, right? If it was Guerin, why would he tell the twins about it? I know he is friends with them, but that is a lot of trust to have._

He figured he should stop trying to figure it out in his head and just ask them about it, but that sounded so terrifying to him. _Maybe I should talk to Liz and see what she wants to do about it?_

He would talk to Liz when he got to school, but until then, his own internal freak out would be replaying the scene he saw yesterday and asking himself the same questions. He decided that he should walk to school as a way to calm himself down, which kind of worked, but by the time he got to school he was really tired and almost late. So almost late that he had to run to his first period in order to make it in time, which means that he wouldn’t be able to see Liz until, at least, lunch and that was only if she didn’t sit with Valenti.

He considered going over to talk to Guerin during his English class, at least to ask about his guitar, but he chickened out when Isabel sat down beside Guerin. Out of the three of them, she was definitely the scariest. So, he kept his mouth shut and tried not to stare at them throughout the entire class, especially after Isabel caught him looking at them. As soon as the bell rang, he was the first one out the door and practically ran to his locker so that he could go to lunch and talk to Liz.

As soon as he walked up to their table he said to Liz “We need to talk about what happened yesterday.” He was so caught up in trying to get his answers that he forgot that other people sat at the table with them.

“Woah, what happened yesterday?” Rosa said with a grin on her face like she was about to be told the juiciest secret ever.

Alex’s mind blanked for a second and all he could do was say something along the lines of “oh...well...um…” while he tried to think of a lie to come up with because he didn’t want to go spilling people’s secrets. Luckily, though, Liz had his back.

“Michael stole his guitar yesterday so we went to get it back, but we couldn’t.” Which was the truth, just leaving out the reason he couldn’t get it back.

“So why do you need to talk about it?” Maria questioned them with a slightly confused face.

“Because Max and Isabel were with him and Liz was flirting with Max the entire time,” Alex said, coming up with a lie that he thought would be believable. Liz does hang out with Max a lot and occasionally says things that could be interpreted as flirting, but Liz seemed to disagree with this because she kicked him under the table, really hard. “I was hoping to convince her to break up with Valenti and ask out Max.”

If there was ever a way to make Maria and Rosa completely forget about a conversation, it was to get them interested in some relationship drama.

“And I told Alex that I don’t like Max in that way,” Liz tried to defend herself, but if the way she was blushing said anything, it was that that wasn’t true.

It seemed to do the trick because they didn’t ask any more about what happened yesterday, although Alex did notice that Maria was giving them both odd looks throughout lunch.

As they were on their way out of the cafeteria, Liz told him to come by the Crashdown after school and they would talk about it in her room since Rosa had to work the after school shift again.

Alex and Liz were completely silent on the drive to the Crashdown, but Rosa didn’t seem like she minded as she chatted away from the driver’s seat about how her day went and complaining about how she is the one who has to do the after school shift everyday this week instead of Liz.

When they got to the Crashdown, Liz and Alex walked silently upstairs after Rosa left towards the kitchen. In Liz and Rosa’s room, Alex sat on Rosa’s bed while Liz sat on her own and they both just stared at each other waiting for the other to speak.

“So...about yesterday?” Liz started off awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

“Someone totally moved it with their mind, we just don’t know who,” Alex continued for her because her sentence trailed off into nothing. “Now we just have to figure out if we should ask them about it because I, for one, am very curious.”

“We don’t know for sure what happened. It is not scientifically possible for someone to move something with their mind.” Liz still seemed to be trying to convince herself that what happened yesterday was a shared hallucination between her and Alex.

“Sometimes science can’t explain everything Liz. I mean, 100 years ago, a microwave probably would have been considered witchcraft,” Alex was trying to get it through Liz’s head that she was just being too stubborn about it.

“Well if it is true, then it has to be Michael who did it, right? We have known Max and Isabel since they were little and they have never done something weird like that. I doubt little kids would have full control of telekinesis. But, Michael didn’t come to Roswell until we were in middle school, so it's probably him.” Liz says as she works out in her head the most logical options.

“Should we tell him we know?” Alex asked because he didn’t know if he could look at Michael everyday without asking him a million questions about what he saw, but he also didn’t know if asking him about it would put himself in danger.

“I have so many questions for him. I wonder if his brain scans look the same as our? If he can move things with his mind, you would think he would have a lot more brain activity. Maybe that is why he is so smart. Maybe it has something to do with his blood. I wonder if he would be willing to give me a blood sample? How much can he move with his mind? That trailer would have been heavy which means he can obviously lift a lot more than his body can. We should try to figure out just how much he can lift.” Liz rambled on not even realizing that Alex was getting more uncomfortable the more she was talking.

“You want to experiment on him?” Alex cut her off, slightly horrified. “That’s probably part of the reason he doesn’t tell anyone what he can do. He doesn’t want to be dragged away to some lab and experimented on.”

“I’m not going to drag him off to a lab and I would obviously have to have his permission first, but aren’t you curious about what he can do and why?” Liz looked at him like her thought process had been obvious.

“Okay, yeah, I’m curious, but if he doesn’t want to give up the information, we shouldn’t push him.” Alex said, making sure Liz understood him.

“Fine. We can try to catch him tomorrow after school to talk to him.” Liz said, conceding to Alex’s terms.

_Tomorrow is going to be a really long day_ , Alex thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depending on how much I actually study for my finals this weekend, I might be able to upload the next chapter this weekend.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of last night's episode, I might have to take a break from this fandom until the next episode airs. I don't know. We'll see. I will probably never watch last night's episode though.

Michael had three classes with Alex Manes: English, Calculus, and AP Physics. In every single one of those classes the next day, Alex kept staring at him and it was starting to unnerve him. He was looking at him like he was trying to work out a problem, but every time Michael looked back at him, Alex went to look in almost the exact opposite direction. So, Michael stopped looking directly at him and only observed him from the corner of his eye.

Michael couldn’t figure out what he might have done that would cause him to be the complete focus of Alex. Maybe the rumors were true about Alex and he had a crush on Michael, though he doesn’t understand why that would make him so fidgety, or why Alex is being so obvious about it. Most of the girls who have liked him have been very subtle about it because they didn’t want other people to know that they were “slumming it”. It was usually one of Isabel’s rich friends though so that made sense, Alex having a crush on him does not make sense, even if he is gay. What could Michael possibly have done to get on his radar?

When he was sitting with Max and Isabel at one of the cafeteria tables after school he asked them this exact same question.

“Maybe he wants to be friends with you but doesn’t know how to approach you,” is Max’s suggestion that is quickly pushed aside when both Michael and Isabel give him a flat look. “That’s all I’ve got. I have no idea what else to tell you.”

“I guess we won’t have to wait very long to find out because he is headed over here now.” Isabel pointed over to where Alex was walking over to their table with a determined look on his face.

He stood directly in front of Michael, stared down at him and said, “Guerin, I need to talk to you.” When Michael made no move to stand up, he looked over in Max and Isabel’s direction and added, “alone.”

When Michael continued to sit there frozen, having a mostly-internal freak out that Alex was talking to him, Isabel responded for him. “Why do you need to talk to him?” And then as an afterthought added in, “alone, anyway.”

“It’s about a guitar that went missing from the music room,” he told Isabel then turned his head to look Michael directly in the eye, “My guitar.”

“That was _your_ guitar that I accidentally stole from the music room,” Michael said just loud enough that everyone at the table could hear him.

“How do you accidentally steal a guitar,” Max mostly asked himself, but Michael decided to respond anyway.

“I was under a lot of pressure.”

“That’s not the point,” Alex exclaimed when it seemed like they were going to go off on a tangent about this. “Where is my guitar, Guerin?”

“I put it back in the music room this morning, I swear, you can go check. I only wanted to borrow it for the morning, but then the music teacher came in and she thought it was my guitar and I didn’t want to tell her that I just picked up a random guitar that was already in the room so I just went with it and I told myself I would come back early yesterday morning to make sure I could return it so that the owner wouldn’t miss it, but I guess you noticed it was gone anyway.”

“Jesus, Guerin, take a breath,” Alex said when it looked like Michael wasn’t going to stop his rambling anytime soon.

“I’m sorry, okay. I promise I won’t take it again, I just wanted to play for a little while,” Michael felt like he needed to keep apologizing because Alex was being so nice about it and he wasn’t used to people outside of Max and Isabel being this nice to him.

“It’s fine,” Alex dismissed it, he didn’t want to keep anyone who wanted to from playing music, the world could always use more people who like to make music. He suddenly became nervous when he remembered the real reason he was talking to Michael right now, “but, uh… can we still talk somewhere… alone.”

“Whatever you want to say to Michael you can say to us too,” Isabel said and Michael nodded to Alex because he was slightly worried about the face Alex was making and if it was something bad he wanted Max and Isabel there with him.

“It’s just that… well I guess they were there, so they would know,” Alex said, but he seemed conflicted on whether to continue. He must have seen something in Isabel’s face when he looked at her because he decided to continue.

“After the first day of school, when Liz and I found out my guitar wasn’t in the music room, the music teacher told us that you took it, so we went to find you to get it back,” he started off and all three of them listened intently, wondering where this was going, “Liz mentioned that you spent most of the time after school at Sanders so we went over there but it was closed. We hopped over the gate anyway to see if you were around even though it was closed.” At this point all three of their faces paled because they remembered what they were doing that day.

Alex seemed to understand that they were freaking out so he went straight to the point. “We saw Michael move a whole ass Airstream with his mind. And I know those things weigh over a few thousand pounds so don’t try and tell me you pushed it or anything, me and Liz were going over all of the possibilities, and this was the biggest one that made some sort of sense.” Michael tried to get Alex to sit down after he started getting slightly louder.

“Can we talk about this somewhere else?” Michael asked as he looked around the cafeteria at all the people still lingering around after school.

“Sure let’s go to the music room. No one is there after school most days.” Alex stands up and all three go to follow him.

Once in the music room, there is an awkward silence caused by no one knowing how to restart their conversation. The silence was broken though when Liz entered the room and went to stand over near Alex.

“Seriously! You invited someone else here,” Isabel said pointing over towards Liz.

“I already told you that she knows,” Alex defended his choice of telling Liz where they were, “she saw it too.”

“And what exactly do you think you saw?” Isabel asked as she stepped closer to them. “How do you know you weren’t just hallucinating?”

“Why would both of us have the exact same hallucination? And why would you ask us to talk in private if there wasn’t truth to what Alex said?” Liz said thinking about things logically.

“Maybe because Alex was saying some pretty insane things in the middle of the cafeteria,” Isabel said, and if looks could kill, Alex would be dead.

“Woah, Iz, let’s just all calm down a little,” Michael said, getting a little bit desperate because if he didn’t stop this soon, then Isabel would be erasing both their minds and he didn’t want that to happen.

“Or you could just be trying to protect yourselves and you and Max have powers too,” Liz shouted at Isabel, and before she could react Michael stood in between them.

“Stop!” Michael shouted and pushed them away from each other. “You’re right. I have powers, but leave Max and Isabel out of this, I only told them about it a few years ago.”

Both Max and Isabel look confused, and Isabel a little angry, at Michael’s statement, which immediately made Alex suspicious and think that Michael might not be telling the full truth.

For his part though, Michael was telling the truth, he did only tell Max and Isabel about his powers when he came back to Roswell and he did want them to leave Max and Iz out of all the powers talk because he didn’t want them to be exposed too. If it was just him exposed and Liz and Alex told people, then he would be the only one that would get hurt, it was the only way to guarantee their safety. He didn’t want Isabel to get in their minds and make them forget it happened because then that opens her up to harm if they were to ever somehow remember. So, he is just fine with putting himself in the line of fire in order to keep his siblings safe.

“Look, I will tell you guys everything, but can we do it another time because it is kind of a long story and I am still trying to come to terms with the both of you knowing about it,” Michael said.

Alex took pity on him because he looked exhausted, so he said “Sure, we can talk tomorrow after school,” as he dragged Liz out of the music room even though she looked like she wanted to protest.

“What are you doing? Why did you tell them that?” Isabel practically shouts at him a few seconds after Alex and Liz left the room.

“They were not going to back down from what they know they saw and it’s better if they think I am the only one with powers, that way I can protect you two. If they decide that they think I am dangerous and turn me over to the government, then at least you two stay out of it,” Michael says holding firm in his beliefs.

“You know I can just go into their minds and erase them ever knowing about it,” Isabel looks at Michael like it should have been the first thing that occurred to him.

“Yeah, but you’re a little out of practice and if anything goes wrong, I don’t want them to have leverage over you too,” Michael pleads with her to change her mind about erasing their memories, “Please trust me when I say I can handle this.”

“Fine,” Isabel says when Michael gives her his best puppy dog eyes, she could never resist those, “but, if it looks like they are going to tell someone else, I don’t care what you say, I am erasing their memories.”


	5. The Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little bit shorter because I had to break it up into two.
> 
> Also, it took me a little longer to finish because it is heavily Malex based and I needed to take a small break from them, but I should be updating it more frequently now.

The next day, after school, Alex walked into the music room to find that only Michael was there.

“Where’s Max and Isabel?”

“Isabel said she had something important to do and I told Max that, since this is just about me, he didn’t need to come with to hear a story he has heard multiple times before,” Michael says, though he does seem a little uncomfortable being around Alex alone. “Where’s Liz?”

“Rosa was begging her to cover her shift at The Crashdown today, so I promised her I would fill her in,” Alex says, glad that she is not here so that Guerin doesn’t think he is outnumbered.

There is an awkward silence that surrounds them for a minute or two, but eventually, Michael asks, “Do you want to sit down? This is kind of a long story so…” He gestures towards the benches that the choir kids stand on when they are singing.

They sit down next to each other on the first row and Alex thinks this might be a bad idea because, now, all he can think about is the heat he can feel coming off of Guerin and how he smells kind of like the rain, but only after it has stopped raining. He berates himself for getting off-track in his own mind and looks up at Guerin who is already looking back at him.

“So...what do you want to know?” Michael tries not to fidget because he has no clue what kind of questions Alex will ask him or even how many of those questions he will actually be able to answer.

“I think the most obvious question is where do you come from?” Alex can see that the question rattles Michael a little bit so he tacks on at the end, “You don’t have to answer that question if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s just...I don’t really know,” Michael looks away from Alex as he continues his story, “my family crash landed on Earth in 1947, but I was asleep in...a sort of...stasis pod?” He says it like a question because he still hasn’t figured out exactly what the purpose of the pods was. He knows they kept them the same age for decades, but beyond that he doesn’t know what they do to them on a cellular level.

“I woke up in 1997 and was found by a trucker who took me to the police. The police then placed me in a group home because I couldn’t speak English so they had no clue where I came from or where my parents were. The group home is where I met Isabel and Max, we were there together for a few months until they were adopted by the Evans family.” Michael has to stop for a minute when he remembers that day. He doesn’t remember much from what happened in the group home, but he does remember the day that his siblings were leaving the group home looking back at him like they didn’t want to leave them behind.

“After that, I was moved to Albuquerque and I didn’t come back to Roswell until I was twelve. On my first day of school back in Roswell, I saw Max and Isabel and I remembered them from the group home and they kind of took me under their wing.” Michael stopped there because he didn’t want to lie so much that it was obvious he was lying. He also wanted to give Alex a moment to process what he said because Alex is giving him a look he can’t identify.

“When did you tell Max and Isabel?” is the first thing that Alex says after a whole minute of silently staring at Michael.

Michael is very surprised by the question, he thought his first question would have been something about the pods.

“I told them not too long after I came back to Roswell. I couldn’t really hide it from them when they caught me drinking a bottle of Isabel’s acetone after I broke my arm.” Which was a true story, but the real explanation he had to give them was how he figured out that acetone helps heal them, it was not a pretty story.

“I’m sorry,” Alex starts off with a wide-eyed look, “you drink acetone to heal? How does that work?”

“I don’t really know. All I do know is that I drank it one time and it made me feel better after I got hurt so I kept doing it.” Michael gave off a shrug and hoped that Alex wouldn’t ask for more details about that particular story. Luckily, Alex seems to let go of that for now, but he kind of just stares at Michael instead of asking anymore questions.

If Michael is being honest with himself, it is not really uncomfortable because Alex is giving him a look of understanding. He doesn’t understand why Alex is giving him a look of understanding, but at least it is not something like pity.

Alex just stares at Michael because he can’t think of anything else to say to him. He understands being willing to try anything to make the pain stop, but he has never resorted to drinking acetone. What would drive someone to do that and where did he get the acetone? Alex feels like he probably doesn’t want to know the answers to those questions so he doesn’t ask them. Instead, he just keeps staring at Guerin and he is starting to feel like a creep, but he can’t pull his eyes away.

Instead of thinking up more questions to ask Guerin, all he can think about is how he looks sort of sad after telling Alex all of this. It makes Alex want to reach out to him and pull him into a hug, so he does.

Michael seems surprised at first when Alex pulls him into a hug, but he starts to relax into it so Alex keeps a hold of him. When they start to pull away from the hug, Alex looks down at Michael who is already looking up at him and Alex does, what he thinks, is the stupidest thing he has ever done. He starts leaning in and for a second, he thinks Michael starts to lean in too, until suddenly…

Michael jumps up and says, “I forgot that I have...somewhere else I have to be right now,” and he dashes out of the room as quickly as he can.

Alex is just sitting on the choir stands mentally hitting himself for thinking that Michael might like him. The only reason that Michael was even talking to him in the first place was because he found out Michael’s secret, if he hadn’t, Michael probably wouldn’t even know he existed.

He stands up after determining that he has pushed himself down enough and starts to head to the Crashdown to talk to Liz.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also during my break from Malex, I started three new fics that are all family based.
> 
> The first one is a Charmed AU with the pod squad as the charmed siblings and all the other characters peppered throughout. There are no definitive pairings for that one yet. Probably Malex and Echo, maybe Kyle and Isabel.
> 
> The second one is an AU where Michael is raised by his mom and dad from the beginning and they were in a pod too in the cave with them and Max and Isabel have their parents too.
> 
> The third one is where Arturo notices that Alex is being abused after his mom leaves and so he decides to take Alex in an love him unconditionally just like he does with Rosa even though he knows she is not biologically his daughter.
> 
> Let me know if any of you would be interested in reading any of those!


	6. Panic! at the Friends' Houses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finals hit me like a bus, but they are finally over so I can do things other than study now.

On his way out of the school, Michael texts Isabel and Max that he is going through a crisis and needs their help. He goes a lot over the speed limit to get to their house and then walks up to their room without even saying hello to anyone and then proceeds to pace in front of them for a solid two minutes before either asks what’s wrong with him.

“Does this have something to do with how your talk with Alex went?” Isabel goes to stand in front of him in order to get him to stop pacing, but he goes around her like he didn’t even see her there.

Michael flails his arms in the air and lets out what sounds like an irritated whine or a disgruntled groan, Isabel wasn’t sure which. Isabel and Max look at each other, trying to figure out how to proceed in a conversation where Michael only wants to communicate non-verbally.

“Michael, you have to talk to us if you want our help,” Max says as if he is talking to a small child.

Michael starts to mumble under his breath, nothing discernible until his voice gets slightly higher when he says”...and I just walked away,” which confuses Isabel and Max even more. Then they are startled when he shouts out, “And I didn’t even give him an actual reason, I just freaked out.”

Michael looks over to Max and Isabel, hoping they can tell him what to do, but they just look lost. Michael stares at them, wide-eyed with a ‘what-should-I-do’ kind of gesture.

Isabel grabs him by the shoulders and looks him in the eye and says, “Michael, you never actually told us what you are freaking out about.”

“I think Alex wanted to kiss me...and I think I wanted him to,” Michael explains slowly, like he is still trying to figure out what was happening himself.

Both Isabel and Max are surprised at his declaration, but Isabel is the first to respond. “What do you mean you _think_ you wanted him to? You either want him to do it or you don’t.”

But Max is quickly behind her. “Wait, that’s not important. What is important is whether or not you talked to him and whether or not he knows about me and Isabel too.”

Michael completely ignores Max for the time being and answers Isabel’s question instead, “I have never had a crush on a guy before, I have never even had a crush at all, I have no clue if this is what it is supposed to feel like.”

“What about all those girls you have dated?” Isabel points out.

“I have never dated any girls before, most of them just want to make-out with me or have sex, but none of them would ever actually want to be seen with me.” Michael explains what he thought was pretty obvious to everyone else. “Why do you think I have never introduced them to you guys before? Plus, those are usually one-and-dones.”

Isabel gives him a sympathetic look that is veering too close to pity for his liking. “Well, how do you feel about Alex?”

“I don’t know, it’s like,” Michael pauses trying to pull together his thoughts. “It’s like he understands me and when he was looking in my eyes, it was like everything around me stopped and the noise in my brain quieted and when he hugged me, I felt safe, like he was protecting me. And it’s weird because I don’t know a lot about him, but around him, I feel like I can just be myself, no need to put on a front.”

Max speaking pulls him out of his Alex haze. “Maybe that’s because he knows that you are an alien so you don’t have to pretend to be human around him.”

“It’s more than that,” Michael responds, suddenly annoyed with Max and wanting to get off topic. “And before you ask again, he doesn’t know anything about the two of you, I made sure of it.”

“No way are you changing topics on me, not when it was getting interesting,” Isabel reasserts herself in the conversation. “Are you going to do anything about him trying to kiss you?”

“I don’t know,” Michael thinks about it for a moment. “What do people normally do in this type of situation?”

“Well,” Isabel draws out to give off the impression that she knows what she is talking about, “if you like him back, then you tell him you like him, if you don’t like him back, then you tell him you don’t like him back. It’s not that complicated Michael.”

“Yes it is,” Michael shouts in a high pitched voice. “What if he doesn’t actually like me and he was just caught up in the adrenaline of learning that aliens are real?”

“Then you talk to him about it,” Isabel deadpans. “It’s amazing how many problems can be solved and questions can be answered when two people just communicate with each other.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Michael nods his head trying to convince himself to follow Isabel’s advice. “What could possibly go wrong? It’s not like I am going to tell him that I like him and he is going to be so disgusted that he calls the government to drag me away.” Michael goes quiet as his brain spits out even more bad scenarios that all end up with him being experimented on in a lab. “He wouldn’t do that to me right?”

“Michael, you are blowing things out of proportion,” Isabel pulls him into a hug in order to calm him down. “He is not going to sell you out to the government.”

“You’re right,” Michael says after a few minutes of calming down. “He is too nice to do that. I should just talk to him and get it all out in the open.” However, when he says this his mind starts to come up with new scenarios that end differently than the last set, but still with his heart broken. “Maybe…”

After almost getting lost on his walk to the Crashdown because his mind was wandering so much, he walks in to see Liz laughing at whatever Kyle was saying to her and that just makes his mood worse.

He goes over to a booth that is as far away from the counter as he can get, he will go talk to Liz after Valenti leaves, but for now he is going to sulk because Liz gets to be all happy with the guy she likes and Alex just got rejected by a guy he didn’t even know he liked until ten seconds before he was almost kissing him.

Thinking about it, though, it made sense to him. He could understand why Michael would want answers about where he came from, it’s not like earth has been very nice to him. He also understands feeling alone, even when there are tons of people around you, maybe not to the same extent as Michael, but he still understands it. Michael has been through a lot, but he doesn’t let it drag him down, he studies hard and is at the top of their class and, if the rumors are true, he is living in a truck, on his own, as a teenager. He thinks all of that makes Michael extraordinary.

After almost half an hour, Kyle finally leaves and Alex goes over to the counter to greet Liz. “Hey, is your shift almost over.”

Liz looks at him kind of alarmed because his voice sounds defeated, so she looks over at the clock and says, “I can end my shift now, there are enough other workers here since the rush is over. Do you want to head up to my room to talk?”

Alex just nods his head and follows after her. When they reach her room, he notices that Rosa still isn’t there, but he doesn’t dwell too much on it because he is still having his own internal freak out about almost kissing Guerin.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Liz asks after he doesn’t speak for a few minutes when they get in the room.

Alex’s shoulders are tense when he blurts out, “I almost kissed him,” then he deflates and in a defeated voice continues, “but he ran away and now I am pretty sure he will want nothing to do with me.”

Liz is so stunned that it takes her a few seconds to process what Alex said. “You almost kissed Michael?” she asks because she needs to make sure that they are on the same page and she also wants to make sure she heard him right.

“Yes,” Alex shouts and then puts his head in his hands and grumbles, “and now I don’t know what to do because we were having what I thought was a moment, but then he ran out of there so fast saying that he had something to do.”

“Maybe he really did have something to do,” Liz tried to reassure him, but looking at her face he could tell that she didn’t really believe that.

“The weird thing is that, for a second, I thought he wanted to kiss me too,” Alex knows it’s probably just wishful thinking when he remembers, “but he jumped up like I had just burned him.”

“How about instead of worrying yourself about whether or not he wanted to kiss you, you should just ask him how he feels,” Liz suggests, but she can see that her logic is not getting into his brain.

“I don’t want to make him more uncomfortable,” Alex pauses to figure out how to phrase his worries, “I know from experience that straight guys don’t like it when it is implied that they might have feelings for another guy.”

“I still think you should talk to him,” Liz grabs his shoulders to make sure he is listening to her, “he might just be confused about whether or not you like him or maybe he is confused about whether or not he likes you.”

“How about I tell you all the other things I learned while I was with Michael instead of going on about this,” Alex diverts the topic knowing that he will be avoiding Michael from now on. He doesn’t want to keep seeing Liz look at him like he is making the wrong decision because he knows this is the right decision for him to make so that he doesn’t get his heart broken.

So, he tells her the story Michael told her and then they chat about other things, just hanging out for the next few hours before he has to head home. Neither of them bring up Michael again.


	7. Friends? Maybe More?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: the third section of this chapter is where Kyle is bullying Alex and he uses a homophobic slur
> 
> I have no clue what bullying in regular schools is like so I just used things I have heard straight people say to the gay people at the catholic school I went to.

It’s been a week since their almost kiss and every time Michael sees Alex in the hallways and tries to go and talk to him, Alex turns and walks the other way. He can’t tell if Alex is avoiding him because he freaked him out by running away or he freaked him out with the fact that he landed on earth in 1947 which makes him a minimum of 61 years old. He’s hoping it is just about him running away because at least he can fix that, he can’t change when he crash landed on earth.

He just wishes that he could have a chance to explain himself, but Alex won’t let him. It seems like Alex has already made up his mind which means that he probably doesn’t want to be with Michael anyway.

So, finally after a week of trying to get Alex’s attention, Michael gives up and hopes that one day, at least they can be friends.

At lunch, Max notices that Michael is looking really disappointed, so he does what he can to make him feel better. “I know when you first told us, I tried to play it off, but from what you told us, I do think he genuinely likes you.”

Michael sighed and looked up at Max. “It doesn’t matter if he likes me if there is nothing he wants to do about it,” a guilty look passes over Michael’s face, “after the way I acted he probably thinks I want nothing to do with him either, but I can’t know that unless he actually talks to me about it.”

“Maybe he’s scared,” Max suggests while trying to think what could be going through Alex’s mind. “It is probably hard for him to admit he likes a guy with the family he comes from. I mean aren’t they all military, maybe he is trying to protect you from them. If his dad figured out that we are aliens, imagine what would happen to us.”

“I didn’t think about it like that,” Michael gets a little lost in his thoughts after that, but Max’s voice brings him back out of it.

“That’s why I was trying to get you off topic when you were talking about the possibility of liking him,” Max says guiltily, “I didn’t want you to get hurt. I know Alex is a good person, but his family is not and he can’t control them. So, keep that in mind if you do decide to admit your feelings to him.”

“I’m going to go find him and talk to him and I am not going to let him run away from the conversation this time,” Michael has a determined look as he stands up to leave the cafeteria.

Liz saw Michael from across the cafeteria and looked around, she assumed he was looking for Alex, but Alex wasn’t in the cafeteria and when Michael noticed he left, presumably to continue his search for Alex. Liz wanted to talk to him about his feelings for Alex, so she stood up to follow after him.

“Where are you going?” Maria asked from her side.

Liz had forgotten that she wasn’t alone for a minute and replied, “I am going to try and find Kyle, he is never this late for lunch when we have plans to eat together.” This was a lie because they had not made plans to eat lunch together. The football team does some “lunchtime bonding” together once a week.

She runs out of the cafeteria to catch up with Michael and as she leaves, she sees him rounding one of the corners. She has to jog a little bit to really catch up with him because he doesn’t stop when she calls out his name.

When she goes to touch his shoulder, he looks very surprised to find her behind him.

“Did you not hear me calling out your name?” Liz asked exasperated, both from the fact that he was ignoring her and from the fact that she had to jog to catch up with him.

“Sorry,” Michael said sheepishly, “I was caught up in my own head.” He seemed to realize that Liz could probably help him and he brightened up in an instant. “Do you know where Alex is? He ran out of English class before it even started, but I need to talk to him.”

Liz took a little pity on him and told him, “Sometimes he likes to eat lunch alone so that he can think without being interrupted. I’ll show you where he usually goes if you answer some questions for me.”

Michael looked at her skeptically, but conceded to her terms.

Liz thought it was best to just rip off the band-aid. “Do you like Alex back?” Judging from the look on Michael’s face, that was not the question he had been expecting her to ask.

“Does that mean Alex likes me too?” Michael gave as an answer, hoping this could be a quid pro quo situation.

“Of course he does, why do you think he was trying to kiss you?” Liz replied incredulously. _How can someone so intelligent be so dense at the same time?_

“I kind of got the hint from him avoiding me that trying to kiss me was a mistake. If he liked me then why would he avoid me?”

Liz stood in front of him to stop him from walking and made him look her in the eye so that she knew she could get her point across. “Because he thought that you didn’t like him back so he didn’t want to make things uncomfortable for you.”

A look of realization crossed Michael’s face and they continued to walk in silence while Michael processed that.

It was very hard to avoid Michael, when it seemed like all Michael wanted to do was talk to him. Every time they saw each other in the halls or in class Michael would try to come over and talk to him, but Alex was determined to avoid the conversation.

_Maybe I should just completely ignore my feelings and pretend to be dude-bros with him,_ Alex thought, _but how do you guy friends act around each other? Is there a different set of rules?_ Alex hadn’t had any guy friends after his friendship with Valenti ended freshman year when he joined the football team. I need to get my act together and soon.

Right now, Alex was skipping class because Michael was in his English class and was determined more than ever to talk to him, it’s almost lunchtime now, though, so he goes to his locker, grabs his lunch, and sits in an abandoned hallway. He doesn’t feel like eating with his friends today, he would much rather wallow in self pity.

He makes the mistake of getting lost in thoughts when half way through lunch, he doesn’t notice Valenti and some of the others from the football team come walking down the hallway.

“Look what we have here, a loser in its natural habitat, alone.” And of course it was Wyatt Long who had to go and make his day even worse.

“That doesn’t even make sense, Wyatt. Alone is not a type of habitat. To this day I am still surprised that you somehow passed the second grade.” Alex moved to stand up so that he could walk away from these idiots, but suddenly Kyle was stepping up into his space. 

“Where do you think you’re going? We just wanted to have a friendly chat,” Valenti said, sarcastically sweet.

“Woah, you don’t want to get too close to me there Valenti,” Alex said stepping a little further into his space to whisper in his ear, “you might catch the gay.”

Then, Kyle was grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and pushing him into the wall. “Listen here you little fag, I am nothing like you.”

“You see, the problem with that statement is, I feel like, if you have to say it, you must be worried on some level that you actually might catch the gay.” Alex said smugly, but it was also a mistake because in the next second, Kyle pulled back and punched him really hard in the face.

The other guys in the football team were cheering him on and it looked like he was going to go for another punch when, out of nowhere, Michael steps in between them and pushes Valenti back.

In the distance he also thinks he hears Liz hout out Kyle’s name, but he is too focused on the fact that Michael is staring at him after he has just been beaten up. He definitely can’t take that kind of humiliation right now, so he gets up as quickly as he can and runs towards the nearest bathroom. Turns out, Michael is not one to give up quickly and follows right behind him.

“Kyle?!” Liz shouts when she sees him standing over Alex with his fist raised. “What are you doing to Alex?”

“Relax Liz, we are just having a bit of fun with him,” Kyle says looking down to find that Alex is no longer there and when he looks up and down the hall, he can’t find him anywhere.

“Really? Fun? Because it looked to me like bullying,” Liz shouts in his face as she gets closer to him.

“We weren’t bullying him, we were just ‘setting him straight’ so to speak.” Kyle practically face palmed when Wyatt said that because he saw how much angrier it made Liz.

“Look Liz, it’s just ‘boys will be boys’ alright?” Kyle said, trying to make her understand his side of it.

“Okay,” Kyle let out a sigh of relief because it seemed like she would understand, but then she continued, “then you go be with your boys because we are done.”

“Wait, are you dumping me?” Kyle explained, thinking of anything he could say to salvage his relationship.

“Yes,” Liz walked away and didn’t look back. Kyle, on the other hand, was heartbroken, realizing just how much he fucked up.

“Are you okay?” And that was a good question that he honestly does not know the answer to. He has been beaten enough to know that he will have a bruise on his cheek, but that is not what he is worrying about right now. He never wanted his friends to know that Valenti was bullying him for the same reason he never told them how his dad really treats him at home, he doesn’t want to see that look of pity in their eyes. They already give it to him every time he mentions he has a strict father, they wouldn’t understand what it is like to have a father who hates you so much that he has literally tried to ‘beat the gay’ out of you before you even knew you were gay.

But, he thinks Michael might understand. After all, there has to be a reason he ran away from his foster home and is living out of his truck if that rumor is true. And even if that rumor is not true, he knows that people have horror stories from the foster system, so maybe Michael could understand him.

“I don’t know,” he finally answers, “for four years I have been hiding from Liz and Maria and Rosa that Valenti messes with me and now Liz has probably already told the others.”

“Is it such a bad thing that they know?” Michael asks because he thinks it would be good to have people who love you behind you to defend you.

“It’s just,” he pauses for a moment because he wants to figure out how to word it without sounding like he doesn’t appreciate everything they do for him, “we are used to being a group of outcasts. But it’s different, being an outcast vs. getting picked on because you’re an outcast. When you're just an outcast it is easier to ignore everyone else.”

“You don’t think they would understand?”

“It’s not that I don’t think they would understand,” Alex shakes his head, determined to get through this, “Kyle used to be my best friend, but when he found out I was gay he thought that made me a completely different person and he didn’t want to be friends anymore. Then, when he joined the football team, that’s when he started picking on me.”

It hasn’t escaped Michael’s notice that Alex never refers to what the football team does to him as bullying, but instead of dwelling on that he asks, “Do you think that your friends are going to think differently of you and not want to be friends anymore?”

Alex looks down, ashamed, “I know they are good people, but sometimes I feel like I am just too much. Like I have too many problems that I need them to help solve, so if I can handle something on my own, then I do it on my own.”

Michael gently grabs the sides of Alex’s face to force him to look up and Alex startles because he didn’t realize that Michael had gotten so close, “You are not a burden on your friends, they want to help you because they love you.”

“Agree to disagree.”

Michael is still holding Alex’s face and he actually realizes it after staring into Alex’s eyes for what felt like hours, getting lost in the deep brown. He quickly drops his hands and shuffles around awkwardly.

“I also wanted to talk to you about why I ran away the other day,” Michael pauses when he doesn’t really know how to proceed. Looking over at Alex he can see that he has made him fidgety and he doesn’t want to make Alex uncomfortable so he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind, “I ran away because I wanted to kiss you.”

A small part of Alex is surprised by that declaration, but an even bigger part of him is confused. “If you wanted to kiss me, then why didn’t you, I thought I made it pretty obvious that I wanted to kiss you by leaning in.”

“I freaked out because I have never liked anyone before like I like you.”

“You mean you have never liked a guy.”

“No,” Michael says, kind of frustrated, “well, yes, but what I actually meant was that I have only ever had hookups. I have never dated anyone before and I didn’t know if kissing someone before asking them out on a date was acceptable behavior or if that puts you distinctly in the hookup zone. I have never had to worry about this before because I never wanted to date the people I was hooking up with.”

Before Michael can ramble on any further, Alex cuts him off. “You want to date me?”

Michael stepped back up close to Alex and tentatively reached out to hold his hand. When Alex didn’t pull back he linked their fingers together and said, “Yeah, if that’s something you want.”

Alex smiled and Michael decided in that moment that Alex’s smile was his favorite thing about Earth and that he would do everything in his power to make sure that Alex was always smiling. He was so focused on Alex's smile that he didn’t realize he was leaning in until Alex’s hand on his chest was stopping him.

“We are not having our first kiss as a couple in, arguably, the most disgusting boys bathroom in the school.”

“Fair enough,” Michael smiled brightly back at Alex because he referred to them as a couple, which means that he is officially dating someone for the first time in his life.


	8. Pure Unadulterated Fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long for me to finish, but I went almost a whole week without any inspiration, but next chapter we are going to get into the bigger plot of the story.

The bell signalling the end of lunch rang and Michael asked Alex if he wanted to hang out after school was over.

“While I wish I could, I have to work after school today at the UFO Museum,” Alex said with a whine. It was never fun selling tickets to tourists who would ask him a million questions about aliens as if he were alive when the crash actually happened.

Michael tried not to laugh at the irony of his boyfriend working at a museum that specializes in aliens. He also doesn’t think he will ever get tired of calling Alex his boyfriend. “You are my boyfriend,” he says with wondrous excitement, staring at Alex.

“Yes, I am,” Alex said laughing slightly, “where were you when we talked about this ten minutes ago?”

“I was caught up in the fact that you actually want to be my boyfriend,” he says with the brightest smile on his face.

“Well, I am going to go to class because I don’t want to be late,” Alex drops the hand that Michael had still been holding, “and if we don’t get a chance to talk in physics, then I will see you tomorrow, boyfriend.”

Michael thinks that Alex was probably just trying to tease him, but he is too giddy at the thought of Alex calling him boyfriend that he doesn’t care if Alex was teasing him.

On his way out of school, Michael sees Valenti moping on the steps looking over at Liz longingly as she walks to her car. He doesn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for him, but it is a little weird seeing the quarterback so unhappy. He doesn’t dwell on it though as he walks towards his truck with Max and Isabel.

“Did you guys hear that Liz broke up with Kyle? That means that I have an actual shot with her now,” Max does a little fist pump into the air before he climbs into the passenger side of the truck.

“Only if you ever get the courage to actually tell her you have feelings for her,” Isabel says under her breath, but Max still heard her and shot her a glare.

“You might want to give her some time, she sounded really upset when she broke up with him, though that might have something to do with him punching one of her best friends.” Michael doesn’t want Max to rush in with his heart on the line only for Liz to turn him down because she just got out of a relationship. He thinks that anyone with eyes could see that Liz likes Max back, but everyone has different recovery times from relationships and he doesn’t think she is ready for a new one, especially since she only broke up with Kyle today.

“Can we stop by the Crashdown? I just want to make sure she is okay after everything that happened.”

Michael is hesitant to believe Max and he doesn’t want him to lose his shot with Liz because he does think they would be good for each other, but he does give in and agree to it because he also wants to know how Liz is doing after learning the truth about Kyle.

At the Crashdown, they each order a burger and fries and sit at the counter, waiting for Liz to have a break.

When Liz comes over to talk to them, before Max can even open his mouth, Michael asks, “How are you feeling?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Liz busies herself with cleaning the counter so she doesn’t have to meet their eyes.

“I’m talking about the fact that your now ex-boyfriend is bullying one of your best friends,” Michael does not soften the blow and Liz flinches when he says it.

“For years Alex told me that their falling out was because Kyle decided to join the football team and Alex was an outcast, but I guess that was only half the truth,” Liz starts to tear up a little but she clears her throat and shakes her head and the tears are gone. “What I don’t understand is why Alex never told us about it.”

“Maybe he saw how much you liked him and he didn’t want to ruin it for you,” Max tries to comfort her, but apparently that was the wrong thing to say because now she looks angry.

“If he had told me what a jerk Kyle was then I wouldn’t have liked him anymore.”

None of them knew how to respond to that, so they just kept quiet and Liz went back to working.

“Well, as thrilling as that was, I’m going to go talk to a,” Isabel pauses for a moment like she is trying to think of the right word to use, but she eventually settles on “friend,” and she grabs her plate and leaves the counter.

Max and Michael sit in silence for a minute before Max asks him how his talk with Alex went and they talk about that for a while. He can tell that Max is happy for him and approves of his relationship with Alex, which means the world to him. When he told Max about his crush, Max wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, but now it at least sounds like Max is happy that Michael is happy.

At one point Michael gets up to go to the restroom and when he comes back, Max is talking to Liz again and if the way Liz is blushing says anything, it is that Max is attempting to flirt with her.

Michael looks around for Isabel hoping he can sit with her and her “friend” instead of going back over to Max and what is , most certainly, some very cheesy or poetic flirting. When he does find Isabel, she is sitting with Rosa and they are sharing a plate of fries. Instead of trying to even understand the shock that Isabel is even hanging out with Rosa, he figures he would be better off on his own so he decides to go for a walk to get as far away from his siblings as possible.

He tells Max on his way out so that he won’t worry when Michael never returns from the restroom. When he gets outside he takes in his surroundings to figure out which way he should go when he remembers that Alex was working at the UFO Emporium after school. With a smile on his face, he starts to head in the direction of the UFO Emporium, wondering if there is some kind of alien themed uniform that Alex has to wear.

Alex is bored. He has been at work for an hour already and only one person has bought a ticket and he still has to work for another two hours today before closing. To make things worse the bruise on his cheek is already starting to form and he already knows that his dad will have questions about where it came from. He also knows that if he tells his dad he got into a fight, the most important thing to his dad will be whether or not he won. He really does not want to tell his dad that he got into a fight with Kyle Valenti either because then his dad will unleash a whole new amount of hell on him. Which means, as much as he is dreading staying at work, he is dreading going home even more.

Even though he is already having a shitty day, it gets even worse when he sees Kyle Valenti walking towards the UFO Emporium. As he wastes time trying to figure out whether or not he can take a break to escape, Kyle seems to have seen him and is now jogging over to him.

He stands outside the booth, fidgeting with a small frown on his face, he opens and closes his mouth a few times, but never actually says anything. Deciding to put him out of his misery, Alex asks him, “Are you planning on buying a ticket or are you just going to stand there gaping like a fish?”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you,” Kyle staring down at his hands and Alex thinks he seems kind of embarrassed. _Probably because he doesn’t want anyone to see that he is talking to me, Alex thinks._

“I would rather not talk to you and I have to work, so…” Alex hopes that Kyle will take the hint and leave.

“I get that,” Kyle hesitates for a second and then says, “but I wanted to tell you that I am sorry.”

Alex doesn’t really know how to respond to that. First of all, he has no clue what Kyle is apologizing for; punching him, insulting him, dropping him completely as a friend, the list goes on and on. Second of all, Alex is pretty sure he is just doing this to get back in Liz’s good graces so that she will date him again.

“What exactly are you apologizing for?” Alex challenges because he doesn’t think that Kyle will actually admit to how he has treated Alex.

“For how I have treated you since we got to high school. Until Liz started yelling at me for punching you, I never realized how bad I was hurting you. I just thought of it as joking around or, as your dad called it, ‘boys being boys’ but Liz didn’t quite see it that way and after thinking about it, I realized that it was unfair for us to all team up against you like that.”

“You know, I might have been able to believe that if it weren’t for all the names you called me. You weren’t picking on me because you were joking around, you were picking on me because I am gay.” Alex doesn’t raise his voice, but the eerily calm way that Alex is saying this shakes Kyle to his core.

“You’re right,” Kyle said and he takes a deep breath to tell Alex something he has never told anyone before. “The summer before freshman year your dad told me that, because you are gay, people would think you are weak and if I hung out with you, people would think that I was weak too. Being on the football team was the only way I was ever going to get out of Roswell, I don’t want to stay here for the rest of my life. Was it a shitty thing to do? Yeah, but at the time I was only thinking about how it would affect me.”

Alex has no clue how to respond to that. He is not surprised that his father would do something like that, but he also does not want to forgive Kyle because that really was a shitty thing for him to do.

Kyle takes Alex’s extended silence as his cue to leave and dejectedly walks off but he thinks to himself, _there has to be some way I can make it up to him._

As Michael approaches the UFO Emporium he notices that Kyle is talking to Alex and he can tell, even from across the street, that Alex is confused about whatever Kyle is saying to him. When Kyle stops talking, he notices that Alex doesn’t make any attempt to respond, but he does look like he is thinking a lot of things over in his head. After no one speaks for about a minute Kyle starts to walk away while looking back towards Alex to see if he will stop him.

Once Kyle has turned the corner, Michael crosses the street to approach his boyfriend who is still looking thoughtful.

As he gets closer he can see that Alex is resting his head on his hand and he is biting his look. His first thought is that Alex looks insanely hot like that, but his second thought is that he is worried that Alex hasn’t noticed him approaching even though he is only five feet away now.

“Hard at work I see.” That seems to catch Alex’s attention because he looks up at Michael and his thoughtful look turns into a bright smile.

“Yeah, well, it’s been a weird day.”

Michael hesitates for a moment before he says, “I saw Kyle leaving. Do you want to talk about it?”

Alex huffs out a laugh. “Oddly enough, he came here to apologize for how he treated me,” saying it out loud sounds even weirder than trying to figure it out in his head. “He said the main reason he did it was because my father basically told him to.” Alex has a look on his face that Michael can’t decipher, but he continues, “I wouldn’t put it past my dad to do that, but I also don’t know if I believe him.”

Michael doesn’t know what to say to make him feel better because nothing will change the fact that the guy he considered a best friend for years ruthlessly bullied him for being gay, so instead he opts to change the subject.

“Do you have a break coming up anytime soon?”

“Actually, I was thinking of taking a break right now. Want to join me?” Alex grins at him and puts up the sign that says he will be back in 15 minutes. Michael grins right back at him.

“Lead the way.”

In the break room, Michael stares at Alex as he takes off the stupid UFO Emporium hat off and runs his fingers through his hair.

“You know, I’m a little disappointed that you don’t have a better uniform. I was kind of hoping for something like the antennas that they wear at the Crashdown,” Michael looks off in the distance like he is trying to imagine what Alex would look like with an antenna headband on.

“Oh really,” Alex says as he walks closer to Michael. “Is that what you like?”

Michael’s breath catches in his throat when Alex rests his hands on Michael’s hips. He finds his voice a second later. “It would definitely be a lot cuter than the hat you have on right now,” he says as he puts his own arms around Alex’s neck.

“If I didn’t know any better, I would say you were trying to seduce me Guerin.”

“Oh, I am definitely trying to seduce you,” Michael leans in close enough that their lips are almost touching. “Is it working?”

Alex barely whispers out a yes as he leans in the rest of the way to connect their lips.

The only word that Michael can think of to describe his first kiss with Alex Manes is magical. It is like something inside of him has been unlocked that he always buried deep inside him, the ability to let someone love him. He knows that love is a strong word for something that has not even been going on for a full day, but he also knows that he never wants to stop kissing Alex.

Sadly, they both do need oxygen, so they have to break apart to breathe, but when they do they both have the biggest smiles on their faces that don’t look like they are going away anytime soon.

Alex looks down at his feet, nervous for a quick second, before he says, “I could close this place early, it’s not like anyone else is going to come by anyway. We could go back to my place, if you want?”

Michael can see that Alex is nervous to what his reaction will be, which is why he is really sad when he has to tell him, “I was hanging out with Max and Isabel at the Crashdown earlier and told them that I was going for a walk, so I have to go back to them now so that they don’t freak out. Maybe we can do that some other time?”

Alex is a little disappointed at that, but he also doesn’t want to worry Michael’s two best friends so he reluctantly withdraws his hands from Michael’s hips in order to let him leave.

On his walk back to the Crashdown, Michael couldn’t help but have the biggest smile on his face and he even skipped a little, but he would never admit that to anyone.

As soon as he walks in the door, Max looks over at him and says “Well, someone looks happy.”

“I ran into Alex on my walk and we had a...good talk,” Michael says and Max does not ask for more details because he does not think that he wants to know more details.

Before they could say anything else, Isabel walked over to them and her eyes were a little puffy and red rimmed. Michael thinks she might have been crying so he looks over to the booth he saw her in earlier only to find that Rosa was no longer there. He suspects that Rosa was probably the reason she was crying, but he doesn’t want to bring it up and have Isabel yell at him so instead he asks them if they want to head back to their house and they agree.


	9. It's the Most Family-Filled Time of the Year (Ugh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took me so long, but teenager interactions with adults are hard for some reason.

It has been almost three months since Michael started his relationship with Alex and things were going very well. They had only one fight so far and that was when Alex offered Michael the shed outside of his house to sleep in, but Michael didn’t think it would be a good idea for Alex’s boyfriend to be sleeping in such close proximity to Alex’s homophobic father.

It was almost Christmas break, which means that it was getting way too cold at night to sleep in his truck, which means that Max and Isabel have been getting increasingly creative with ways to sneak Michael into their house at night. They keep saying that they can just ask their parents if he can spend the night more often, but he doesn’t want to risk them saying no and then finding out that they are sneaking him in anyway. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?

Right now it was dead week, so all he had to do was study for midterms because the teachers weren’t allowed to give them homework. That is exactly what he was doing at the Crashdown with Alex, or at least that was what he was attempting to do, but Alex seemed a bit spaced out, so not much studying was actually going on.

“What’s on your mind?” Michael taps on Alex’s forehead about five minutes after Alex didn’t answer the question from the English study guide he asked him.

Alex makes a startled noise, but then looks up at Michael. “I’m sorry. Christmas is the only time of the year where everyone who is not on tour comes home and I am really not looking forward to seeing my brothers this weekend.”

“Why not? I would think putting more people between you and your dad would be a good thing,” Michael asks, but the more he thinks about it, he realizes that Alex’s brothers might be more like their dad than like Alex.

As if Alex can see Michael’s thought process he is quick to assure him. “They’re not bad or anything,” Alex pauses for a minute to try and put into words what it is like to have his brothers home. “They have this way of making everything a competition,” Alex starts off slowly, “no one wants to be the disappointment of the family, because if you are the disappointment…”

Alex doesn’t actually have to finish that sentence for Michael to understand what he is getting at.

“Also, it means that someone is always home,” Alex reaches across the table to link his hands with Micheal’s and gives him a smile, “which makes it harder to sneak out and see my boyfriend without them knowing.”

“That’s ok.” Michael said, giving him a smile in return. “Apparently, Max and Isabel asked if I could spend most of Christmas Break at their house and they are letting me for some reason.” Michael gives off an air of confusion about this like he genuinely cannot believe that the Evans’ would want to have him in their house for that long.

He hopes they actually mean it because soon the temperature will start to get below freezing at night. Even though he has a higher body temperature than humans, if he stays in the cold long enough he could get frostbite. It’s unlikely, but he doesn’t exactly want to take that chance.

When Alex can see that Michael is now the one who is spaced out, he waves his hand in front of Michael’s face to get his attention.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Michael asks, coming back into focus.

“I wasn’t saying anything, but maybe we should focus on studying instead of worrying about Christmas Break.” Alex shoots a pointed look towards the textbooks and notes scattered around them.

So, for the next hour or so, they spend their time kind of studying, but mostly just cracking jokes at each other in order to make the other feel better.

Midterms breezed by easily for Michael, the only one he slightly struggled on was English because _how should I know what was going through the author’s mind? I'm not the author and I am definitely not a mind reader_. He always hated how English teachers made them analyze a text when the author never clearly stated why they wrote what they wrote. Michael was a scientist, he wanted the facts, not the very weird guesses.

Now that Christmas Break has started, it was time to spend two weeks at the Evans’ house and even though he knows it will be awkward when he is inevitably left alone with one of their parents, it will be nice to be able to take a hot shower every day.

Michael, Max, and Isabel walked into the Evans’ house after the last day of midterms to find Mrs. Evans in the kitchen looking conflicted.

“What’s wrong, mom?” Isabel was first to ask.

When she looked up she made eye contact with Michael, but he couldn’t read her exact expression. “I just called Michael’s foster parents to make sure it was fine for him to stay here for the whole break, but they said that they haven’t seen him since the beginning of summer and they had assumed he had just run away.”

Michael’s first instinct was to get out of there as fast as he can, before Mrs. Evans decides to call his caseworker and have him sent to a new home. He hates that his old foster parents narced on him, he thought they had a good deal going, they still get to take their check, but they don’t have to take care of him.

But, when Michael actually gets a good look at Mrs. Evans' face, he can see that she seems more disappointed in herself than anything. When he doesn’t respond to her earlier statement, she asks herself, “how did I not notice?” Then she turns back to him and asks him, “why didn’t you ever tell us? We could have helped you.”

Now, Michael is the one who is confused. Why would they ever want to help him? They always just seemed indifferent to his presence.

“I don’t need your help. I can survive on my own,” is what Michael said out loud, but inside he was thinking, _I didn’t come to you because you didn’t want me the first time around_ , but how do you explain that to someone who probably doesn’t even recognize you as the child writing on the walls in the group home.

Mrs. Evans takes in a deep breath and takes a minute to think of a solution. “How about this,” she pauses to think of the best way to put it without setting Michael off again. “Our house is open to you whenever you want to stay here overnight or eat a meal with us or even just to take a shower, but I won’t force it on you. I won’t even get you a bed if you don’t want it, but if you do, that option is open.”

Michael had never been given so many choices by an adult before. If he was being honest, he didn’t really know what to do or how to respond.

“Thank you?” He thinks it is the right response, but when he can see that she is still looking at him expectantly, he adds on, “I’ll take it into consideration.”

She seems much more assured by that and tells them to go have fun with their winter break and that dinner is at six, so they leave her to head up to Max’s bedroom.

Michael can’t stop thinking about what she said, though. She isn’t going to force him to live with them, but she also isn’t going to call CPS if he doesn’t stay with them? That doesn’t make any sense to him. Does she actually care about him? Or is she just trying to tell him that she knows he is homeless so that she can hold it against him later? He doesn’t know if he should trust her, but all those things she said he could have if he stayed here, a bed and showering everyday, those are very tempting offers. Also adding in that he would never have to worry about where his next meal was coming from, it definitely seemed too good to be true.

Even if he does decide to take her up on her offer, in three months he turns 18 and Sanders says that he can have the Airstream if he keeps working for him, so he won’t have to live off of her charity for very long.

Alex was in his own, personal hell, sitting at a dinner table with his dad and two of his brothers trading war stories. The worst part was that his favorite brother isn’t even here, he is stuck with Flint and Clay. Gregory is overseas in who-knows-what-country because he doesn’t even have the decency to tell his youngest brother where he is going.

He hopes that if he doesn’t say anything, they will forget that he is there and he can sneak away at one point. However, right as he sees his chance to leave, his dad starts to tell Flint about a special project that he wants Flint to be a part of. Before his dad goes into any more detail though, he looks over at Alex and tells Flint that they will talk about it later.

Alex stands up from the table and tells them that he was done and would rather go to his room anyway, but as he turns the corner to go upstairs he waits for a minute to see if he can hear what they are talking about. He can hear the low murmur of their voices, but he can’t hear what they are actually saying.

_Oh well, I guess I will just have to do some investigating on my own_ , he thinks as he walks up to his bedroom. At least now Christmas Break will be a little more interesting. He was hoping there would be something to distract him while he is forced to spend multiple days in the presence of his dad.


	10. Just a Whole Lot of Oof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have come back from the Land of Unreliable Wifi (also known as hill country) to upload a chapter of two before I go back in two weeks.
> 
> Also, this chapter started getting long so I broke it up into two, so I should have the next part done in less than a week.

Alex is very confused when he is woken at 5:30 on a Monday morning during his Christmas Break by his father.

“I am taking your brothers on a quick road trip for the day,” his dad says, without giving him a second to really wake up. “I expect that we won’t be back until tomorrow. Do not leave the house, if you do I will know. I have eyes and ears everywhere,” and with that threat, his dad was leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

He figures that today is the perfect day to do some snooping around about whatever project his dad is working on. It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t leave the house today because he doesn’t want to risk someone snitching on him to his father, he will just have to wait until he has more time to plan sneaking out.

Normally, he wouldn’t really care about what his dad is doing, but normally, his dad doesn’t keep things so top secret around the house. His dad loves talking about all of his achievements while he has been in the military, but he never talks about any of his current projects. He thinks the only things he has ever heard his dad talking about happened before he was even born.

He would start in his dad’s room, but he also doesn’t want to risk putting anything out of place, so he is going to start with his dad’s home office. Alex isn’t supposed to know what the password to the office is, but his dad was really bad at hiding it, he doesn’t even use his body to cover the pin when he is putting it in.

As soon as he opens the door to the office, he regrets it immediately.

The walls of the office are littered with pictures, newspaper clippings, and notes that were written by his dad. Alex has no clue what exactly he is looking at, but it reminds him a lot of the ramblings of a mad man.

He only takes a quick glance around the room, but one newspaper clipping catches his eye.

Looking at the picture and title it seems to be about three kids who were found wandering in the desert, but what really catches his eye is what his father wrote at the top. _Valenti coverup?_

A million questions fly through Alex’s mind. Which Valenti? What are they covering up? Why does his dad have a newspaper clipping of three traumatized kids?

Upon further inspection, he realizes that the story is eerily similar to what Michael told him; mute, found by a truck driver, and brought to a group home. The only difference is that there are two other kids involved.

When he looks at the next newspaper clipping, he sees that it is about two of the kids found being adopted. Even though the article does not say who adopted the kids, he was willing to place a bet on the other two kids being the only two people that Michael hangs out with outside of him, Max and Isabel Evans.

_Does that make Isabel and Max aliens, too? Alex thought as he read over the article again. Why wouldn’t Michael just tell me? Was he trying to protect them or something? Why would Michael need to protect them from me?_

Alex quickly shut down those thoughts before he started blaming Michael for something before talking to him.

Alex took out his phone and took pictures of the articles and just of the room in general before putting everything back exactly the way it was so that his dad would never know he was in here.

[To: Liz]  
**Are you busy tomorrow? I have something I want to tell you (6:24 AM)**

Alex took one last look around the room to see if anything was out of place. When he didn’t find anything, he went back to his room and didn’t leave it for the rest of the day. A little over an hour later, Liz sent back her reply.

[From: Liz]  
**I have a shift at the Crashdown but I could use the company (7:48 AM)**

[From: Liz]  
**It will be a nice reprieve from Kyle constantly asking for my forgiveness (7:48 AM)**

His dad and brothers had actually come home late that night. When he saw Flint he gasped a little. He looked so different from the last time he saw him; harsher and angrier.

Flint was never really sweet or sensitive, but he was always there to try and protect Alex, there was a certain kindness to him. But, looking at him now, he can’t seem to find his protective big brother anymore, he just looks cold.

He passes by Alex without a glance before he goes to his room and slams his door shut, which should have made his father start yelling at Flint, but Alex could only still hear him shuffling around downstairs.

Whatever their dad had shown him today had made him really angry. Whether it was at their father or at someone else, he couldn’t tell. Alex just knows that whatever Flint saw today has probably changed him forever, and he doesn’t think it is for the better.

Alex got to the Crashdown not long after it opened, so there were only a few people inside. He didn’t see Liz right away so he went over to Arturo to ask where she was and he said that she slept in and would be down in a few minutes. He took that as his cue to take a seat in one of the booths near the windows so that he could watch the people who were out and about as he waited.

There weren’t many people outside, after all it was seven in the morning, but there was the occasional jogger or person walking their dog. It also gave him time to figure out how he was going to tell Liz in a public area how there was a possibility that there were two more aliens, and that those aliens might be Max and Isabel Evans.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice that Liz was already sitting in front of him, trying to get his attention.

“Ow,” he said when she flicked him on the forehead.

She gave him that look that says _really?_ before she tells him, “I called your name three times and you still didn’t respond, so I did what I had to do. Plus, I didn’t flick you that hard.”

Alex looked around and noticed that there were a lot more people inside now and he wondered how long he was zoned out for. A look at the clock showed that he had been here for almost an hour.

Alex wasted no time in telling her what he was here for, “I found some information that I think you need to hear, but I don’t want to tell you around this many people. When does your shift end?”

Liz seemed to sense how distressed he was, so she put on her best reassuring face and replied, “I can have Rosa take over for the lunch shift in three hours, if you can wait that long.”

“Sure. I’ll just stay over here. Come find me when you are done,” and with that he goes back to looking out the window hoping it will give him some answers.

The longer Alex thinks, the more his thoughts travel to how this news will affect Michael. He knows that he is going to have to tell Michael eventually, but he doesn’t know how to bring it up. He feels like saying “Hey, Michael! I think my dad knows that you are an alien and he may be trying to hunt you down and I also know that Max and Isabel are probably aliens, are you excited for our date next weekend?” wouldn’t go over well with Michael.

He hopes that Michael won’t break up with him on the spot when he learns that Alex’s dad might be trying to expose him as an alien, but he also knows that it is a real possibility. Which leads his thought into a downward spiral of how much Michael will hate him when he learns that his dad is an alien hunter.

Fortunately, someone waving a hand in front of his face pushes those thoughts to the back of his mind. Unfortunately, that person ends up being Kyle Valenti.

With everything that is going on in his life right now, he does not want to have to deal with kyle on top of it all. Surprisingly, though, when he looks up, Kyle looks uncharacteristically nervous.

Alex sees that Liz is back in the kitchen instead of waiting tables, so she wouldn’t be able to tell that Kyle was talking to him. Which is probably what Kyle was going for and that made him a little nervous. He hasn’t spoken to Kyle since he tried to apologize to him and he doesn’t know why Kyle is approaching him now.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while now, but without Michael or Liz around,” Kyle says, and if it is even possible he looks more nervous. Like he is scared that Alex is going to turn him away.

Alex is lost because Kyle seems to be sincere, but he has also had nothing but cruel things to say to Alex for the past three years. Kyle has also already apologized to him, so he doesn’t know what else he wants to add. Alex is curious enough that he motions for Kyle to continue.

“You were my best friend before we had our fallout…” Kyle pauses for a second to reconsider his words, “before I started picking on you. I will admit that I was afraid to be associated with you because then people would think I was gay.” In Alex’s eyes, Kyle’s little speech wasn’t going well so far, but he decided to let him continue. “But now, looking back on how awful I was to you, I want to make it up to you.”

Kyle stops his speech to stare at Alex like he is expecting Alex to start naming ways that he can make up for years of bullying on the spot, but Alex is too surprised to say anything. He is fairly confident that the look on his face is dumbfounded with an open mouth, he is that surprised.

Kyle seems to understand that this is a lot for Alex to take in, so his idea of how to make it better is to keep talking. “I will even quit the football team if that is what you want me to do. I mean it when I say-”

“Why don’t you want Liz or Michael to know about this?” Alex cuts him off. He doesn’t even want to think of the implications of the ease with which Kyle is willing to quit the football team.

This time it is Kyle who has the dumbfounded look on his face, though his is probably because he was cut off with a question that doesn’t directly relate to what he was talking about. “I don’t want you to think that I am just saying this because I want to get back together with Liz. I really do want to try being friends again. I’m also pretty sure Michael would punch me in the face before I even got the chance to speak.”

Alex doesn’t try to argue that point because Michael probably would punch him, but he also doesn’t know if he wants to forgive Kyle for everything he has done to him. Instead he says, “Trust is something that is built up over time,” and he can see that Kyle is confused by this statement, but he continues on anyway. “I used to trust you, but then you broke that trust, and now it is your job to build it back up if you want to try and be friends with me. I don’t want to be friends with you right now, but if you really mean it, then you have to show that to me.”

It takes Kyle a second to process that, but once he does, he gives Alex a nod and stands up, leaving Alex alone again to wait for Liz.


End file.
